Page:Imperialism, A Study.djvu/6

 within each imperialist regime. The urgency of this economic demand was attributed to the growing tendency of industrial productivity, under the new capitalist technique of machinery and power, to exceed the effective demand of the national markets, the rate of production to outrun the rate of home consumption. This was not, of course, the whole story. The rising productivity of industry required larger imports of some forms of raw materials, more imported foods for larger urban populations, and a great variety of imported consumption goods for a rising standard of living. These imports could only be purchased by a corresponding expansion of exports, or else by the incomes derived from foreign investments which implied earlier exports of capital goods.

But with these qualifications in mind, it is nevertheless true that the most potent drive towards enlarged export trade was the excess of capitalist production over the demands of the home market. Now, since it is manifest that everything that is produced belongs to someone connected with its production, who can either consume it or exchange it for some other consumable goods, it seems at first sight unreasonable to expect that an excess of goods requires a foreign market, unless some error has taken place in the-apportionment of producing power as between the different industries. But when we find that at frequent intervals there is a general excess of production beyond the current demands of the home and foreign markets, it becomes manifest that the productive power of capital has been excessively fed. This in its turn means that the processes of saving and investment have proceeded too rapidly. In other words, there has been over-saving and under-spending. For while a certain and a growing quantity of saving and production of more and better capital goods belongs to every progressive national economy, there exists